Answers to your top Instant Book questions!

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Answers to your top Instant Book questions!

Hello everyone,

 

One of the most active discussion topics here in the Community Center is on Instant Book. During our conversations, many of you have raised important questions regarding this hosting tool. So we brought your most-asked questions to the Instant Book team and have gathered the answers for you.

 

I really hope you find the responses helpful. To make it easier to read all the information here, please click on the 'Read more' sections to view the replies! 🙂

 

Why should I use Instant Book? What are the real advantages?

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There are lots of reasons you might consider using Instant Book.

1. For many of you, hosting is your business. You put a lot of effort and time into creating a welcoming experience, and you also rely on the income you generate. Hosts who use Instant Book often get up to two times as many bookings than hosts who require reservation requests. Here’s why:
2. Guests usually prefer to book instantly, if they have that option. It saves them time and allows them to get on with planning the rest of their trip.
3. We have a filter on our search page that allows guests to filter for Instant Book listings, and nearly 2 out of 3 bookings on Airbnb are made using Instant Book.
Instant Book saves you time because you don’t have to respond manually to every reservation request from travelers.

Besides your investment in your own business, as a host you’re on the front lines of creating a world where everyone belongs. Instant Book is a powerful tool you can use to help foster that sense of belonging:

1. Instant Book is one of the best ways to ensure that every guest can receive equal treatment on Airbnb.
2. Our data tells us that a guest who tries to book on Airbnb and gets rejected (or doesn't hear back from a host) is less likely to ever use Airbnb again -- even less likely than a guest who has a 1-star trip on Airbnb!
3. We consistently find that the quality of guests and types of trips booked using Instant Book are nearly identical to request to book trips. Instant Book guests receive the same average ratings from their hosts as any other guest.

Will Instant Book help me get more bookings?

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Yes, you’re more likely to get more bookings if you turn on Instant Book. Here are some reasons why:

 

  1. Guests prefer Instant Book. More than 60% of bookings on Airbnb are now booked instantly.
  2. Instant Book listings get a boost in search results.
  3. Turning on Instant Book means your listing will show in search results when the Instant Book filter is applied.
  4. More views often translates to more reservations. And, our data shows that Instant Book hosts often get up to 2x more reservations than request to book listings.

I'm a new host. I wasn't aware of Instant Book and got a booking without accepting and haven't updated my calendar yet. I have cancelled the booking and now have been fined. Why is Instant Book a default?

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We’re careful to make it clear to new hosts that they can be booked instantly when they set up their listing, but we know there’s room for improvement. Since new hosts are still getting used to Airbnb, we waive the cancellation fee for one host cancellation every six months (learn more).


The reason we want new hosts to use Instant Book when they join Airbnb is that Instant Book is aligned with Airbnb’s mission of creating a world where people can belong anywhere. Guests also prefer to book instantly, and hosts have the potential to earn more if they let guests book instantly. Finally, we’re slowly moving toward Instant Book being the prefered booking method on Airbnb, so this starts new hosts off in the future of booking on Airbnb.

Can I prevent a bad guest that I've had in the past from booking my listing in the future via Instant Book?

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Yes! We recently made a change on Airbnb that automatically blocks guests you’ve negatively reviewed or rated lower than 3 stars from booking with you again.

This is my home and I want to have more control around who stays here. How can I trust that the person arriving at my home is the same person that booked?

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In order to book a home on Airbnb, all guests must meet certain requirements, which include verified phone number, email address, and payment information. We also encourage hosts and guests to add verifications through their social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Hosts can also require that guests submit their government-issued ID to Airbnb for comparison with another form of ID. Usually this process includes the host submitting a selfie photo which Airbnb will check to make sure the selfie matches the photo on their ID. These different layers of verification can help you ensure your guests are who they say they are.

Why is Airbnb giving a search boost to hosts who have Instant Book turned on? I feel like I am at a disadvantage by not turning it on.

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Like you, we want to make sure that travelers choose Airbnb when they book a place. This is why we promote listings that travelers can book instantly. Guests are much more likely to use Airbnb when they’re able to book the place they want instantly, and that means more future business for hosts! We want to encourage hosts to turn on Instant Book because they have the potential to earn more and give their guests the best possible booking experience.

How and when can I disable Instant Book?

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We understand that Instant Book may not work for every single host. You can turn off Instant Book at any time in your Booking Settings. However, before you turn off Instant Book, we encourage you to explore the different guest, calendar, and reservation settings we have available to help you get reservations that fit your listing. For example, if you feel like your reservations are back-to-back and you don’t have any time between them, you can actually set your calendar to automatically block days between reservations.

How often can I cancel an Instant Book penalty free? For what reasons?

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Hosts who use Instant Book have unlimited penalty-free cancellations if a guest breaks a house rule, if they intend to break a house rule, or if the host is uncomfortable with a reservation. These types of cancellations are 100% penalty-free, which means no fees, no automated review, no permanently blocked dates, and no impact on Superhost eligibility.


However, you can’t cancel penalty-free if your reason violates Airbnb’s Non-Discrimination policy. If a guest claims there’s been discrimination, the cancellation will need to be reviewed by Airbnb and may not be penalty-free.

Why are you pushing instant book when it takes away the personal touch that makes Airbnb special?

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Our goal with Instant Book isn’t to take the personal touch away, but to help the host focus less time on the logistics of booking (emailing back and forth, managing expectations, confirming house rules, etc.) and more on the part of hosting that is the magic of Airbnb.


Moreover, Instant Book as an experience helps make guests feel more welcome when they use Airbnb. With reservation requests, guests can often get multiple rejections, even if they meet all the requirements to book. And it’s hard for guests to plan their trip when they’re waiting on hosts who are unresponsive. When guests get rejected or find it hard to book a listing, they’ll often choose to avoid Airbnb when booking their next trip. Knowing they can go on Airbnb, find a place they love, and book it right then, makes guests more confident and more likely to use Airbnb every time they travel.

I have been hosting for a while, and some of my guests who have booked via Instant Book have broken my house rules. Why would I trust Instant Book?

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While there are always exceptions to any rule, it’s important to know that on average, guests who use Instant Book are rated by hosts just as highly as those who request to book. We consistently find that the quality  of guests and types of trips booked using Instant Book are nearly identical to request to book trips.


We provide the ability for you to set clear expectations about your listing in your House Rules and listing description so that both you and your guests share the same understanding about the home.


We want Instant Book hosts to feel as confident that they’re getting the right reservations as hosts who require a reservation request. That’s why if you’re ever uncomfortable with a reservation or if a guest breaks your house rules, you can cancel 100% penalty-free online, anytime. You can learn more about canceling reservations in the Help Center.

Why do only Instant Book guests have to verify their ID and other guests do not?

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Before they can make any reservation, all Airbnb guests are required to submit and confirm their full name, email address, phone number, and payment information. Since Instant Book hosts don’t have the opportunity to review every request, travelers who wish to use Instant Book are required to verify their ID with Airbnb. This way, Instant Book hosts can have more confidence that their guests are who they say they are. In addition, since Instant Book hosts don’t get to see a traveler’s reviews until they receive a booking, we allow them to limit Instant Book reservations to experienced guests with only positive reviews.

This is a suggestion: Can you create a setting where certain dates in our calendars can be booked by Instant Book and other dates must be booked normally?

This a great idea! We’re exploring ways to do this and will provide updates if we decide to move forward with it.

 

Does turning OFF Instant Book make your listing disappear from searches?

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No, turning off Instant Book doesn’t make your listing disappear from search results. However, guests have the ability to filter for Instant Book listings, and in some cases, that filter may be turned on by default. When the filter is on, listings that have Instant Book turned off will not show up unless the traveller turns the filter off.

 

Thank you,

Lizzie

 


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Thank you for the last 7 years, find out more in my Personal Update.


Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.

358 Replies 358

@Lizzie This is how the help article currently describes the process:

 

For Instant Book hosts only

You can cancel instant bookings penalty-free an unlimited number of times if you’re uncomfortable with a reservation or if a guest breaks one of your House Rules. “Penalty-free” means you won’t pay a fee, lose Superhost status (or eligibility for it), or receive any of the other penalties mentioned above.

You may not cancel reservations penalty-free for any other reason, including reasons that violate our nondiscrimination policy.

To cancel an Instant Book reservation you’re uncomfortable with:

  1. Go to Your Reservations and find the reservation you need to cancel
  2. Click Change or Cancel
  3. Select "I’m uncomfortable with the reservation or the guest has broken my House Rules"
  4. Click Next and provide a reason for your concerns
  5. Click Next and write a message to your guest
  6. Click Cancel reservation

Once you complete these steps, the host cancellation penalties for this reservation will be waived, and we’ll help your guest find another place to stay.

If it's within 24 hours of check-in, contact us instead.

Note: If we observe abuse of the policy, we reserve the right to turn off Instant Book for your listing, and you may be subject to other penalties, up to and including suspension and deletion of your account.

 

@Kelly149 this is exactly what I mentioned to @Lizzie earlier, it is misleading. Also, I understand that we need to avoid hosts who want to take advantage of the free penalty cancellation. However, I think it is very important for the rest of the good hosts to have some sort of guarantee that Airbnb CS will follow the rules and policy, not doing guest a favor, and also honor the host's house rules to ensure the bad experience that just happened to me will never happen again.

@Lizzie I can confirm that this information you've passed along from the IB team is incorrect. Today I have gone into my listing and it does not allow me to self-process a cancellation (I've already done 3: one of those guests quit breaking House Rules and re-booked, the other 2 cancellation were both from the same guest for same dates, she broke House Rules first time she booked and then proceeded to re-book while continuing to break same House Rules). So for the next 11 months, if I have guests who willfully book my space with no intention of honoring the rules they have agreed to, then I will have to sit on hold and deal with a customer service rep in order to solve a problem that a guest has created. Hosts should not be penalized (and trust me, having to sit on hold and deal with customer service rather than simply clicking a few buttons is a penalty) for guest errors and/or obstinance.

Hosts who create clear listings should not be penalized when guests are unwilling to abide by terms that they supposedly have "Agreed" to. If IB is the way of the future then it needs to work well for guests and hosts.

And ABB help center articles should be true and valid. Please post the link to the updated help article when it is corrected.

Thanks

@Kelly149 I 100% agree with you. There needs to be a standard/consistency in the policy. Being able to cancel directly for unlimited times w/out penalty because guests do not want to obey house rules and/or make you feel comfortable and only able to do it for 3 times and need to call for the rest is definitely two different things. A responsible host like us can always provide proof/documentation that the guest can not/do not want to follow house rules anyway. 

 

With the experience, I recently had with Airbnb where guest clearly breaking my house rules and then pressured me to break my house rules and give her permission to do so and not getting support and appropriate treatment from Airbnb definitely makes it hard for me to trust them that they will have my back when I want to cancel an IB guests after 3 times. As you said, hosts who create clear listings should not be penalized when the guest is not only breaking house rules but also breaking the airbnb policy.

 

It is not a secret that many decisions that CS make when handling an issue is based on our "luck" whether we get a CS who wants to be fair and wise, or do we get a CS who wants to please guest by favoring them and rewarding them for breaking house rules, etc.

@Farah1@Kelly149, I do not see any effective difference in the two statements concerning cancellation : the hp file says: write all your concern making you want to cancel, someone will read it, maybe with a delay, think about it and either approve it or disapprove it. It does not say: write some  reason whatever and it will be fine. Evidently, if a negative decision is made, the situation may be beyond repair, the guest gone and furious, you will be furious about the penalties and may be obliged to either swallow them or keep calling and lobbying to get them removed. 

Whilst when you call, you get the reaction immediately, can try to convince the rep and if you can't convince them, get some help convincing the guest to tune down the annoying behaviour. You know on the spot, that you may be obliged to swallow your pride, but you and the rep are the only ones informed about that. You can smile at the guest and they will think the Calm-Down-call was all you intended. 

I called a few times, but my mind was rarely made up in advance. Most times the call settled the issue. 

@Helga0 @Farah1

 

I guess that is one of my concerns: why should I go thru a big waste of time arguing w CS & a guest about something that my listing has made terribly clear?

recentky I had a guest who was refusing to provide info for who was coming and when. CS was involved. They call the guest, they called me, I called the guest, I called CS. It was a circus. It took so much time. And in the end the guest was dreadful & was not any more conscientious in residence than he was prior to arriving. 

 

With IB the host has no way of confirming that the guest intents to be reasonable before they book. Therefore abb should protect hosts from these bad bookings. I of course want the place to be booked BUT I want it to be booked by people who will abide by the rules & I shouldn't have to host a guest who won't. 

@Kelly149, you are right, that guests, who do not say when they will arrive are dreadful. I had a few in a row and was teally furious. However I would not cancel for that, if I get other signs of life over a certain period. (People travel and some old people travel without phone). I called airbnb a few times in such cases and most could be raised. Problem solved then. Even if it costs time. But that's like other questions, some are low maintenance, some are not. My last guest was nice and chatty and as interesting as a reading of 20 pages of weather reports from 1923. No communication can be better 😉

 

I can't even imagine to have 3 cancellations in a year. But calling the service has other advantages. The rep can look up, what happened previously. They don't tell you what, but they tell you, if there was nothing, if there were other trips without review and without incident. That helps. I added a first rule, that they need to tell me Eta and details and if they don't, they accept my planning and the checkin time I will communicate via airbnb. 

I had that a few times. Instead of waiting around between 5 pm and midnight, I write them, that I will be home at 7, take a coffee if hou are earlier, or else, that I'm out for dinner between 7 and 9pm, either you are here before or you have dinner yourself and come afterwards. If I have a phone number, I send a text as well. It's taking away some of the stress for me, most send a sms, when they are back in civilisation and phone coverage. I found a few having take out on the garden table, that's ok too. It helps to insure a bit more compliance with the other rules. 😉

For my other rules, there are degrees. A bit more cleaning won't kill me, shoes inside won't passAnd if it was an infraction worse than that, they would not consider doing it twice. I guess I would cancel for illegal behaviour, drugs or fraud. 

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Hello @Kelly149 and @Farah1,

 

Thanks for your additional comments on this, I am really glad you found this helpful. Just to let you know Kelly, as mentioned in another thread we have reported this back to the team who look after the Help Center article. 🙂

 

I just wanted to check Kelly, as you say the information I shared above is incorrect. Is this the wording used or something different so I can understand a little better. 

 

Thanks you both,

 

Lizzie


--------------------


Thank you for the last 7 years, find out more in my Personal Update.


Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.

@Lizzie I originally read what you wrote to mean that a host could auto cancel 4 times before involving CS. But I think you must have meant anything above 3 cancel requires CS. And that is indeed how it is working 

The help article should definitely mention that and there should be a mechanism whereby CS can go in and agree that a host's first 3 cancels were legitimate and put them back in the allowed to auto cancel camp.  It wastes my time & CS resources to make it a mandatory phone call. 

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Aw yes @Kelly149, so on your 4th or more cancellation you would need to contact the Support Team. 🙂

 

It is good to hear further feedback on how you think this could be improved. So just to confirm what you are suggesting, if you reach the 4th cancellation (based on feeling uncomfortable with a booking) and you call the Support Team, you suggest at this point the agent should look into the past three cancellations and if applicable then reset the number of cancellations?

 

Thanks again. 


--------------------


Thank you for the last 7 years, find out more in my Personal Update.


Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.

@Lizzie yes, in fact when I spoke to CS between cancellation 1&2 the rep confirmed that neither should have "counted" against me and that the system showed that but she had no way of "resetting " the count. 

Essentially the take away from all this is that hosts still shouldn't self cancel but should make CS do it. Again, seems like a waste of time for but CS & hosts. But until there is a change then it is what we are stuck with

@Lizzie and also to clarify -- in neither of these situations was I "uncomfortable " with these guests. In both cases they were significantly in breach of rules they had "agreed" to. Rules are only as useful as we are allowed to enforce them. 

Otherwise those rules are just a button for guests to click and then ignore. 

This is not good for our hosts. 

Good info, thank you. However what if you pre-approve a guest and then select the box for blocking dates from being booked instantly by other guest. I did this. Then had a insta booking for overlapping dates. This insta booking did not meet my personal criteria so i had the option of accepting or declining. However when i saw the insta booking i also noted that my original guest's pre approval and msgs were noted in big black letters that dates were not an option. How and why did this happen? I had to explain to her that the dates were indeed availalbe that there had been another booking by an insta booking that i did not accept, yet it still took the dates away from the guest that was given 24hrs. Is it because the dates were overlapping and not exact dates? I declined the insta date request and wrote to her why. I also reported this because it seemed like spam to me. I just want this documented that i would have accpeted the insta booking most likely had i not given the other guest 24hrs. Also the insta booking did not have any referells which is on my isnta booking criteria. So i'm puzzles as to how the insta guest was able to take the dates before i had a chance to accept or decline. Please respond in kind. Heather

@Heather334,

you have 2 things occurring here: the new request was overlapping day, that were temporarily blocked. That seems a programming error and it’s good for you, that you passed it on to airbnb. 

The second thing was normal: when a a guest does not meet the IB criteria, his booking is a request, that you are free to deny. 

Anita83
Level 4
Balt, MD

@Lizzie I have instant book on my city property and I love it.  However, I am very concerned that Airbnb has stated in this memo that they are moving towards IB as the norm for the future.  I have 3 vacation beach rentals on Airbnb that are not on instant book for the sole reason that I can not ensure a full summer season unless I control when people are checking in and out.  I only have 12 money making weeks and I need to ensure that every night is booked.  People can either book for full weeks (Friday to Friday or Monday to Monday) or "mini-weeks" (Monday to Friday or Friday to Monday).  This is outlined in my property description but there is no way to have this syetem (2 turnover days) on IB with the way ABB is structured presently.  Now I feel as though my highly rated beach condos are not going to be seen because ABB is leaving the IB filter on by default.  I love ABB so this is very sad and so discouraging to hear as an owner 😞